I have been busy cataloguing more zines and comics from the Nick Henderson Zine Collection. My favourite surprise was “Snake Tree” by SOLS (really Allan Salisbury), which is a collection of strips from the Snake Tales cartoon. Snake Tales is syndicated in many papers around Australia and the world. Before it was syndicated in the United States Lady Snake started wearing a bikini top (a touch of modesty for the US market?). It did not spoil the story. I love Sundays, I am sure I only like the papers for the comics, the rest of the news can be far too serious.
As a librarian who catalogues books I have my own personal snake – a book snake on my desk (in green). This is made of felt with ball bearings inside. Very useful for librarians to gently hold open the books we are cataloguing without damaging the spine – and I can assure you it doesn’t hiss or bite!
Of course working in our National Library we do have many books on snakes as we receive books from all publishers in Australia via legal deposit.
Living in our country, you are sure to have seen plenty of snakes in the bush. Even living in a city like Canberra they can venture into our backyards. It’s nice and warm at the moment and that tempts the snakes out to enjoy sunbathing on the rocks in the sun. Do you think our neighbour New Zealand might be a little deprived as they don’t have any native snakes?
Well, I’m not so keen on the poisonous ones, so I’ll stick to my favourite cartoon versions and look for any new ones. Mind you I’m now hungry and thinking of different snakes! The edible kind.



Hi Elaine…
Thought you might be interested to know that myself, and fellow zinestAr Chiara are organising the CanberraZine Emporium next year as part of the YOU ARE HERE festival. Quite a lot of zine folks from around Australia have expressed interest in attending, and i know the guys from Sticky will be coming up for this event.
Details can be found on our facebook page – we’ve only launched it this week – getting the hype built, etc… would be fantastic to get your support/Nat Library’s involvement
http://www.facebook.com/CanberraZineEmporium
Have checked out the zine catalog a few times – there are def some hidden jems there!
Hi Natalie,
Glad you enjoyed Elaine’s post, and thanks very much for letting us know about the CanberraZine Emporium next March. Sounds terrific and I can assure you that some National Library staffers will definitely be there! As you can see, we think zines are an important part of Australia’s society/culture and are making a real effort to ensure that we collect at least a representative sample of what is being produced. We’ve had some great donations from people like Nick Henderson and some other zine collectors and creators, and from zine fairs like the one recently held at the Brenda May Gallery in Sydney. We’ve also attended a number of zine fairs ourselves over the years and picked up some really interesting zines there, as well as puchasing some from distros.
I’ll drop you an email to see how we might be able to work together with the CanberraZine Emporium – an exciting opportunity!
Julie
Hi Julie…
Looking forward to hearing from you
I’ve checked out the collection on numerous occasions – it’s fantastic – and hopefully there’ll be an interesting amount for you folks to purchase at next years event!
Cheers,
Natalie